More women join men in paintball battles

ON ANY GIVEN SUNDAY

The easy thing would be to join the girls playing laser tag where you don't need to wear face masks and heavy clothing and get shot in the head with paintballs.

But for a growing number of women, engaging with the guys in make-believe combat and mock urban warfare is the way to shake off stress, elevate the heartbeat and enjoy a Sunday afternoon after church.

"It's an aggressive sport," said Audra Irvine, 22, a cupcake baker from Jacksonville. "Your mind is spinning and your heart's racing. It's high intensity. You're trying not to get shot."

Irvine was out there with other women in the yellow-and-orange paint-splattered fields and warehouses of Orlando Paintball in Lockhart. Orlando Paintball has been around since 1991, but women were once a rarity, owner Spiros Kodounis said.

"When I opened the doors, it was all males. I thought 'this is not good. I am eliminating half the demographic,'" he said.

But that has changed in recent years as women have taken their place beside men in the virtual world of Call of Duty and the real world of Iraq and Afghanistan. These days, Kodounis attracts sorority sisters and bachelorette parties.

"Nowadays, at least 25 to 30 percent are girls," he said. "These girls are different. They are stronger, they are more aggressive, they are more in control."

On Sunday, the women were with brothers and boyfriends, family members and coworkers, dressed in face masks and baggy clothing to lessen the sting of being shot.

Teresa Tiemann has played paintball 10 or 15 times, mostly with her two older brothers. If you are the younger sister and you are playing paintball it's always good be in the same team as your brothers, she said.

"I definitely want to be on the same side with them," said Tiemann, 27, a certified occupational therapy assistant from Orlando. "It would be painful, if not."

She persuaded a friend, Christina Romanos, 25, of Orlando to join them. Shortly thereafter, an orange paintball hit Romanos in the face mask as she was peeking around a barrier to line up a shot.

"I got it right in the face," she said. "I was scared when I first went in there, and then I got hit and OK, it's not that bad."

A paintball hitting bare skin can raise a welt, but they don't sting as much as the demeaning remarks made by males playing the online video combat games, Irvine said.

"I think there's more mutual respect when you're playing with people face to face than online, where you get called a lot of names," she said.

Irvine was treating three of her male friends from college to an afternoon of paintball. Altogether, she spent $200 pretending to kill and be killed.

"This is just a weekend of getting together, having fun and shooting people," Irvine said.

Her role on the team was to provide cover for the others, filling the air with flying balls of paint so others more aggressive than her could rush forward toward the enemy.

Paintball is a sport of adrenaline and testosterone, Kodounis contends, and he thinks the women drawn to paintball have a little more of the male hormone than other females. That could be true, but Irvine, Tiemann and Romanos were far less fearless, macho and daring than their male teammates.